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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27645295">the lonely thief</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Official_Biscuit_Moron/pseuds/Official_Biscuit_Moron'>Official_Biscuit_Moron</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Gintama</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Friendship, Gen, Introspection, i just like catherine a lot, my favorite stinky nasty woman</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 19:43:26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,686</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27645295</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Official_Biscuit_Moron/pseuds/Official_Biscuit_Moron</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Stillness, Catherine has learned, is always temporary.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Catherine &amp; Otose | Terada Ayano, Catherine &amp; Sakata Gintoki, Catherine &amp; Tama</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>33</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>the lonely thief</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Months upon months of working at Snack Otose have dimmed the uneasiness in her heart. She no longer feels the need to be the last one asleep, no longer feels that flighty tension of not knowing if she’ll be able to stay here another night. She’s relaxed enough to hiss and curse at Otose-san’s boy, that weird, curly samurai, at the kids and other fools that linger around him; she’s relaxed enough to scowl at Otose-san’s customers, at the old hag herself, to stop her work, sometimes, and blow smoke and foul words in the patron’s faces. The old hag’s retribution is never far behind, but there’s a comfort in its inevitability. The endless gyration of customers, of stupid white-haired samurai, of foolish kids, of Otose-san, is enough to slow the fluttering of her fragile heart to a steady beat.</p><p>Mostly.</p><p>It still wavers and shakes, sometimes. When she thinks she sees a feline face in the crowd, but it’s just that nerdy samurai boy, wearing a pair of cat-ears, when a bar-goer’s change shines too alluringly in his drunk, clumsy hands, when she looks over at Otose and sees her bent over on the ground, putting a dish out for that huge, ruffian cat, when the new girl, that Tama girl, comes to work and she is efficient and perfect and lovely and though she moves just like a human, Catherine sees her held in place, in time, like the world-spinning, earth-stopping moment that a butterfly lands on your finger. Stillness, Catherine has learned, is always temporary.</p><p>The uneasiness, however faint it has become, flutters in time with the fluctuations of her heart. Catherine ignores it as best she can, knows from years upon years of experience that it never truly goes away. She’ll pull at her face, sometimes, in the bathroom mirror, wondering where the months, where those years upon years have gone, wondering why it took her this long to find somewhere that the fickle, feline jumpiness of her heart quiets to something so bearable. The lines that crease her cheeks and her forehead, that cut under her eyes, are especially apparent in the harsh light of Snack Otose’s restroom.</p><p>She peers at them for only a little while longer, then leans abruptly away from the mirror, straightening her kimono and her spine.</p><p>Before Otose can send Tama to smoke her out, Catherine throws open the door and stalks out.</p><p>She goes to work.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>It’s around eleven at night, completely dark outside, but the interior of Snack Otose is flooded in warm, auburn light. The Yorozuya man came down about thirty minutes ago.</p><p>She’s sweeping—albeit, not very thoroughly—when the stupid silver-permed man at the bar turns around on his stool, drink untouched. He puts his elbows up on the counter and leans his head all the way back, not looking at her, though she feels his eyes all the same.</p><p>After a few moments of the quiet swooshing of the broom against the floor and the chattering of the bar’s patrons, Catherine breaks their silence.</p><p>“What, dirt-poor samurai? Did you come here just to harass a good working girl?”</p><p>His head tilts just enough for him to peer down his nose at her. She bristles. “Like you're working, or a girl, you middle-aged bat,” he says, in his wearisome, ever-irritating baritone, before spinning back around to the counter. His hand rests perfectly still near the glass of sake.</p><p>Catherine’s heart flutters uneasily.</p><p>She ignores it, turns her nose up haughtily, and crosses her arms, broom forgotten. “I’m not a bat, you stupid perm, I’m a cat!”</p><p>“God, don’t remind me.”</p><p>“What the hell is that supposed to mean, bastard!”</p><p>He easily dodges the first punch she throws, though the second, to her undying satisfaction, hits him squarely in the center of his infuriating, curly head. Her fist is quickly swatted away, and the perm grumbles angrily, like a pissed-off cat. She raises her hand to smack him again, but is interrupted by the old hag’s nagging.</p><p>Otose yells at her to keep sweeping, so Catherine gives the bastard samurai one last disdainful look and continues half-heartedly moving the dust around.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>An hour later, and Catherine’s picking up empty glasses and bottles, scrubbing them in the sink until the smudges and residues and oily fingerprints are only a memory and they’re glossy and smooth, dissolving the light and reflecting it off the metal sink, painting her hands and face in stripes of warm green and soft brown. She dries off the glasses, then her hands, turning around to see what had formerly been the shitty samurai flopped in a puddle on the counter, hair engulfing his head in a smoky white cloud. The untouched glass from before is empty, surrounded by a few more like it. His hands are tucked underneath his head.</p><p>When she walks over to pick up the glasses—and maybe give him a rude awakening—the messy mop of curls stirs and sways upward, suddenly backlit, hair filtering the barlight into soft slivers that flutter and flap across her green kimono.</p><p>“Hey! Hey, C-Catherine!” she jumps at being addressed so directly, at the way he stumbles over her name, unused to the feeling of it, cutting his loose-lipped mouth on the sharp consonant. “Cathe...Ca...old bat! Hey! Lemme…hehe! Lemme tell you a secret! It’s so secret. You got it? You can’t tell anybody, you got it?”</p><p>Catherine retracts her hand, where she had been about to grab one of the cups, hesitates, then sits beside him. He looks surprised, the emotion startlingly exaggerated on his slack face—a smile spreads sloppily across his cheeks. His head nearly slips off the hand he has propping it up.</p><p>“You know...Gin-san never thought she’d listen! Boy, I guess miracles <em> do </em>come true, huh?”</p><p>“Not listening, you dumb idiot,” she grumbles. “Just sitting. Am I not allowed to sit? Huh?”</p><p>“You are so, uh-”—he pauses to hiccup and carefully search for the right word—“-re...redundant. Redundant! What a terrible comeback, ah? Yeah! But it’s okay, it’s okay! Gin-san is a kind, kind man. And he forgives you all your sins. Even—hehe—even the sin that is that haircut!” he says cleverly, then slaps the bar with his hand and laughs and laughs and laughs until she hits him upside the head.</p><p>“You said,” she says quietly, over his whining, “you had a secret.”</p><p>“Oh- <em> Ow! </em> Well, I <em> did, </em>you awful woman, I did, until you knocked it out of my brain! Ow ow ow!”</p><p>The stupid samurai punctuates his last cry of pain with a wild swipe at her that she doesn’t bother to dodge; it glances off her shoulder, far too light not to be deliberately so. He frowns and brings the fist back to his face, scanning it over quickly, eyes flicking back to her every once in a while. His gaze is a little sharper, now, less hazy and blurred. She casts hers away, fixes it on her sleeve and the shadows there.</p><p>“I ain’t telling you a secret,” he says. “Everybody everywhere knows Gin-san doesn’t keep secrets.” </p><p>“Yeah, right.”</p><p>Dark eyes on dark eyes and their hands shake in time. Hers clutch at the pack of cigarettes in her sleeve, his a near-empty glass of sake. </p><p>“Yeah, it <em> is </em>right.”</p><p>“Idiot,” she growls, “how stupid do you think I am?”</p><p>He taps a careful finger against his chin. “Hmm, I don’t know, Catherine-san..pretty stupid?”</p><p>She takes the glass out of his hand and slams it down so that the tiny bit of sake still left in it splashes out, glosses over the bar in a slick sheen. His heavy eyes follow the glass in a daze, always a second behind her sharp movements, eventually settling, wide and blank, on her face. “Fine,” she says, “You piece of shit crap. If you’re not gonna tell me your secret, because you ain’t got one or whatever, then I’ll tell you mine.”</p><p>He looks like he wants to look away, but he doesn’t, so she continues.</p><p>“I think I’m happy here,” she says.</p><p>The shitty samurai's eyes shine dimly in the low light. He is frozen in place, hand still where it was when she took the cup from him. Catherine doesn't know why she continues. Why she's telling <em>him, </em>of all people. She doesn't know, but she wonders if it's something about this place, this soft and amber light, her own eyes looking back at her from a different face.</p><p>“I used to think about...getting away. All the time. I used to count the cash in the register when she wasn't looking and sneak looks at the door and wait for a chance.”</p><p>“But I think,” she says, “I could stay here. Tomorrow, and the next day, and all the days after that. With the old lady and that dumb robot. And this dumb town, and this dumb bar, and every shitty patron that comes here. And,” she waves a hand vaguely at him, nervous jitters making her leg bounce up and down. “You...your shady little business, too.”</p><p>“I think,” she says, with a softness that neither of them are accustomed to, “I could stay here forever.”</p><p>“You..” he tilts his head. Something tugs at the corners of his mouth.</p><p>“Yeah,” Catherine mutters, quiet as anything. </p><p>She spins around in her seat and surveys the room beyond his fluffy head and drooping shoulders, to where Otose is serving drinks to a group of rowdy regulars, laughing reluctantly at one of Mu-san’s terrible jokes, gaze fond and reprimanding, tucked snugly into the cozy amber heaven that she built for this town. Tama floats gracefully from table to table, taking orders, gathering bottles, her movements unceasing, regular, a smile ebbing and flowing on her lips. It’s easy for Catherine’s eyes to follow her around the room, her long braid bobbing up and down, easy for her sensitive ears to pick up Tama’s soft footfalls amongst the muddy, drunken murmuring and the clinking of glasses.</p><p>“Yeah,” he echoes, and turns to watch with her.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>they're both boogers in the same nostril &lt;3</p></blockquote></div></div>
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